FLUBBER’S GAME OF THE WEEK: ANAHEIM vs OTTAWA

Welcome back to Flubber’s Game of the Week, where we take a weekly look at the must see game to watch in the NHL. This week we look at Bobby Ryan taking on his old team in his new city in an old arena with a new name. Sound complicated? It is!

Significance

This is the seventh rematch of the 2007 Stanley Cup Final, the only Cup win of the Ducks. Such a memorable series, what with that one guy scoring that one goal that one time, and that one goalie playing well or poorly. How much fun and/or bad stuff. Special/confusing times for Southern California, that’s for sure. Oh, and this guy.

But, all of that is in the past now, and even though Dustin Penner is back with the Ducks, he hasn’t been feeling well lately.

With Penner out for the foreseeable future, this game has lost all significance. But that doesn’t mean we should avoid the most important topic of discussion for this game. That’s right, the return of Jakob Silfverberg to Ottawa!

Ladies!!!

That’s right, the Senators’ 39th overall pick of the 2009 draft returns home for what will probably be the best game of his career.* The Ducks’ new forward has scored four goals in his ten games with the organization, but really, who cares about all of that? Here at the Royal Half dot com, we ask the real important questions: Can Jakob Silfverberg use Twitter at the elite level of Dustin Penner? Let’s go to the video tape!

Bio

Penner:

Twitter savant Dustin Penner labels himself as a “lightning rod,” and “comedic enthusiast,” which is just self aware enough to be comical, but us normal people still don’t believe millionaires hold the social wherewithal to be funny, which makes his bio even funnier. He also pokes fun of his pancake injury with the “pancake aficionado” and “ihop.com” references. Good on you, Mr. Penner. The best way to get on the side of the Internet is to take on the life of your meme. Also, his background is Ice Hockey for the NES, specifically a contest between the USA and what appears to be…Japan…or it could be a maple leaf, so Canada…or cactus? Internet genius.

Silfverberg:

Plain background. “Hockeyplayer”? Not funny. Not Internet worthy. But at least he’s enjoying life. He’s certainly not enjoying the Internet. Come on, live a little.

Retweets

Video in which you will need to turn down your volume

That was an average play at best, Bobby.

Prediction

The Ducks are 5-0-1 against the Sens since beating them in the Final in ’07. That means, like the Avalanche in last week’s matchup, they should continue their dominance against a lesser, Eastern Conference foe. But, Penner is out, and Teemu Selanne has chosen to not play this game because apparently if you get old enough and you play for a team in desperate need for forwards that it would be bad PR for the organization to tell you to actually play games or just retire. So, good on you for achieving that point in life, Mr. Selanne. And shame on you, Ducks. You could have riden yourselves of this nightmare years ago.

Anyway, the Senators are only playing their third home game of the season, so they will probably win. 3-2 Senators.

* – definite assumptions not guaranteed

Flubber McGee is TRH's resident Kansas City correspondent, and has survived as a Kings fan long before the dawn of Internet streaming sites. He has seen the Kings win exactly zero non-exhibition games in person. Have you ever achieved enlightenment? Flubber has, because he once witnessed Kevin and Brett Westgarth fight in, and get kicked out of, the same game (they didn't fight each other, unfortunately). In addition to being a part of TRH, Flubber runs a Kansas City hockey blog. It's exactly what you think it is. You can follow Flubber McGee on Twitter @FlubberMcGee.